Battle Droid - ROTS - Basic (III 17)

Name: Battle DroidCollection: Revenge Of The SithNumber: III 17Source: Revenge Of The SithAvailability: April 2005License: Hasbro

Sent throughout the galaxy in countless numbers, battle droids are the foot soldiers of the Separatist army. Serving Count Dooku and his Confederacy of Independent Systems, battle droids relentlessly attack Republic forces.

When it comes to Separatists, there can be no shortage of them in the basic figure line. By the time the Revenge Of The Sith line became available at retail, Hasbro already ensured that the core characters already had a place in the line. Some came out better than others, but it goes without saying how necessary they are to the plot of the Prequel Trilogy. The Phantom Menace brought us our first B1 Battle Droid characters. Then George Lucas changed things up a bit for us in Attack Of The Clones and changed their color from tan to red (or maroon). The B1 Battle Droid comes full circle in Revenge Of The Sith and their color was changed back to tan. In 2002, Hasbro released two different colored Battle Droids for the basic figure lineup (both the tan and red), and now the tan version has been repainted and released for the Revenge Of The Sith line with very little changes.

Battle Droid has a beautiful paint job. And aesthetically it looks fantastic. The Battle Droid can hold up its droid blaster just like the characters did in the Prequel Trilogy films and it has perfect proportions with little to nothing out of scale. It’s head sculpt fits too loosely on the neck post and you’ll find that it goes flying off if you attempt to pose it to aggressively. And because the figure has a very minimal seven points of articulation, you’re not left with too many options to position this figure. It sadly has a very unbalanced center of gravity, so trying to keep the Battle Droid upright becomes quickly frustrating. Thankfully, Hasbro has included an environmental Felucia-inspired display base and it does the Battle Droid a world of good. In fact, the Battle Droid action figure may look the best out of all of the Revenge Of The Sith figures to utilize this base. It just is a perfect match. Interestingly, we got our best look at the B1 Battle Droids on Utapau instead.

In addition to the droid blaster, the Battle Droid also comes a blast effect (just like the 2002 figure) that attaches to the tip of it. We suppose it looks alright, but we don’t think these little additional accessories are necessary. Again, the Battle Droid looks great. We don’t want to cut it down too much because we’re not sure if Hasbro will be able to make a future Battle Droid action figure “shine” like this, but we also can’t ignore its lack of articulation. It’s severely hurting in this area. You’re basically stuck with one awesome looking pose and then if you want to do anything else, the droid is going to look wonky thanks to its prepositioned arms and hands and extremely limited leg articulation. But it is what it is. Take it or leave it. There’s not much more that can be said about it. We recommend definitely posing this figure on its included base because you’ll get the most out of it that way. Otherwise, you might just get frustrated by what it lacks.